Careful Transliteration

[Guest guest]

Sri. MahavishNu: Your comments are very welcome; I am

sure that many members of this list have observed transliteration

problems. The issue comes back to whether the writer is spelling

out a word from Tamil or Sanskrit - most people appear to use

the Tamil standards with Sanskrit words interchangeably.

Unfortunately, one size does not fit all here, and the resulting

inconsistencies have been described by Sri. Mani Varadarajan

and Sri. Anand Karalapakkam earlier.

 

There is no obvious way to resolve this, since the very fact of

whether a word belongs to Sanskrit or Tamil is disputed by most

people. In this controversial setting, one can easily make the

argument that a particular word is from Tamil and so can be

spelled ambigiously -- an "ambiguity" that would cease to exist

under that argument.

 

It would be a good idea to agree upon some tranliteration

standards for both languages, to begin with. Then, we can use

them to our advantage at least in stotrams and pasurams, where

the "origin" of the words are not in dispute [as opposed to casual

usage]. I request the administrator to provide such guidelines.

 

adiyEn,

-Srinath C.

> "Srimahavishnu Vinjamuri" <s.vinjamuri

> Need to do careful transliteration

>

> For the benefit of a very few Bhagavatas,

> who are frequently writing wrongly transliterated samskruta words in the list

and elsewhere, adiyen wishes to post the following sanskrit words tranliterated

into Englsh which can serve as a guideline.

>

> [.................]

>

> Not all of the above (except the first two) are of serious nature. But there

is nothing wrong in writing the things rightly.

>

> It is higly offensive to find fault with Bhagavatottamas. I tender many many

apologies. My only intention is to serve a very few Bhagavatas in improving

their transliteration.